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by danithemani



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 03:46:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17460038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danithemani/pseuds/danithemani
Summary: The Disciples picked a hell of a day to decide to call it quits.





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  **Alchimie de la douleur**

_one lights thee with his flame, another_

_puts in thee — Nature! — all his gloom!_

_what says to this man: lo! the tomb!_

_cries: life and splendour! to his brother._

 

_o mage unknown whose powers assist_

_my art, and whom I always fear,_

_thou makest me a Midas — peer_

_of that most piteous alchemist;_

_for 'tis through thee I turn my gold_

_to iron, and in heaven behold_

_my hell: beneath her cloud-palls I_

_uncover corpses loved of old;_

_and where the shores celestial die_

_I carve vast tombs against the sky._

 

— Charles Baudelaire, translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks, Flowers of Evil (New York: Ives Washburn, 1931)

 

_Last night was wonderful, precious. I'm so glad you stayed the night. You always look so pretty after a shave. Sometimes I watch you while you're sleeping and I realize you haven't changed a bit. I'm sorry Nora hurt you, Dante. Daddy would never hurt you. You deserve so much better than her. I love you. Stay with me, just until the holidays, just until you can get her those papers. Bring little Shaun, too. You still haven't let me hold him, Dante. What are you so scared of? He's just a baby._  
  
Dante thumbed at the page, tracing the edges. All these years and he could still hear his voice. That wicked, soothing inflection that bit into his skin. It was astounding to think this letter was 200 years old. Father must have slipped it into his wallet the day the bombs fell. He kept it, as terrible a thing as it was, because it was one of the few things he had.  
  
_You don't have to put up with her. You don't have to put up with that. You're such a good boy, you know, Dante. I'll find you something to do at my company. You can live with Daddy again, and you don't have to worry about anything. It'll be just like before. All you have to do is listen like you did last night. You can do that, can't you? You know I can make it all better._  
  
This was the only thing he would hide from Gage. It told too much. He could recognize the curve of the fountain pen ink, his father's name embossed at the top in gold. Dante grew up thinking that was what important people had, their names written in shiny letters at the top of thin paper. He remembered doing that to his own paper, with a glitter pen he stole from a clean white store. ThisHe remembered getting caught practicing when he got home, and the punishment he got home. That was his first scar. _Gypsy_. Nothing more than a common thief. Maybe Father was right. He was a Raider now, after all. What was worse than a Raider?  
  
_I've always admired your kindness, sweetness. But you know where it gets you. Stepped on and used up. Come home to me. Come home to me for the holidays. I don't like to see you leave in the morning, I wish I could hold you in my arms longer. I know that silly thing won't make the Christmas meal you're used to. Just come home._  
  
Those words were more than lies, they were open wounds. With shaking hands, he folded the worn slip of paper up and put it in his wallet, and slipped that into the extra pocket he had sewn into his pants. Dante didn't want to give up so easily. He wanted to crumble it up, rip it to shreds, throw it on the ground and wash it in the mud. But the world was different. Everything was so dry now. Even the mud was different.  
  
He missed the dampness of the soil, the way his weight sunk into the earth with every footstep. He took that for granted, that the ground will stay as he wished it forever, like he felt he took for granted so many things. But now the Earth was dry and cracked, She was cold and bitter and wasted. Before the bombs fell he begged for acceptance, somewhere to be where he felt he belonged. Dante felt he belonged here, somehow, in the dust and radiation and blazing sun. It was full of everything he was warned to stay away from, careless drug addicts, violent men, dirt and grime and grease. There was rust coating everything, thick and red and timeless, like the blood that stained his sleeves, he tried to scrub with Abraxo until it was threadbare. He would be ashamed of the track marks on his arms and he would cover himself up again.  
  
When he was young he would have loved this place. Dante tried to imagine playing at the Nuka-Cade, mixing his own sodas, playing and running and seeing the other laughing faces of children his own age. He would have never had that; Father would never let him have that. The pizza would make his pretty hair greasy, the soda would make him unmanageable, and even a moment in the sun would undo all the hard work of years of creams and bleach baths. He couldn't play with other children, couldn't take home toys. Play meant something else entirely. He could barely just remember what it meant before. But there was a time before that, if he could only remember.  
  
Boston was nowhere like he grew up. Father spirited him away when he was eight years old, away from people that looked like him, sounded like him, thought like him. Everyone moved so fast in the city, with more important things to do and even more important people to see. Everything was a competition, everything was a race. They lived somewhere big and shiny with glass elevators and everything was beautiful. Of course, it would be better here.  
  
Father said it would be better. No more public school and fist fights and nights spent wandering the marsh. When he was young and afraid of the outside world that was a miraculous thing, safe inside a warm home, clean and fed and loved. Dante would be happy. It wasn't true. But he kept the name his mother gave him, hidden away from people that didn't look like them, the people who didn't understand. Dante kept his promises.  
  
He was even farther from that home now. He was a relic. Eternal youth in a world that had withered and died two hundred years ago. Zeus had died, and left Ganymede to run Olympus.

 

 


End file.
